Surfacing the arctic

Abstract

The 1 ongoing adoption of sensor networks, algorithms, and digital data comes with the promise of opening up participation in knowledge production. However, the dynamics of the participatory design (PD) processes in these infrastructuring endeavors remain underspecified. This short paper draws on a study of an oil company's project to design an open digital platform to produce knowledge about the Arctic marine environment. Fraught with political controversies, this effort encompasses several stakeholders with contrasting agendas. Leveraging the relational quality of infrastructure, we propose to revitalize the political roots of PD by problematizing simultaneously the roles of human and non-human participants, foregrounding both digital technology and the monitored natural ecosystems. We discuss how infrastructuring aimed at letting humans visualize the inaccessible, also shapes participation by creating spaces of (in)visibility and concentrating control over knowledge creation in the hands of the most powerful stakeholders.

Human-Computer Insurrection

“…Our point is that our field's existence fuels oppressive systems [86]. This is an inevitable outcome of infrastructures under capitalism, and even absent capitalism, infrastructure enacts control and hegemony [26,109]; this is nowhere more apparent than in the infrastructures HCI researchers actively help build [98,141]. Consequently from both an anti-oppressive and autonomous perspective, an anarchist HCI is at least highly suspicious of and at most actively opposed to centralised infrastructure.…”

Platformization of the public sector: Assessing the space of possibility for participation

“…Here we consider participation by exploring the decision linkages that are created through the opening and closing of choices "that users participate in as co-producers of design ideas and as 'evaluators'" [ [3]:427]. PD has been explicit about the possibility for engaging citizens as end users [8,12,19], but has been criticized for taking a narrow perspective on the scope of participation [10,14,15,18].…”